" For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone — the fixed mindset — creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character — well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics. "

" Growing a healthy self-defense mindset isn’t easy. It takes time, energy, and a personal commitment to learning some tough truths. It forces you to face some ugly ideas, and brings you face to face with private doubts of your own. Most of all, it takes work.

Good instructors respect the work their students do, and strive to understand the struggle for personal growth that brings a learner into class. One way we show respect for the students’ hard work is by making a strong commitment to hard work of our own — the work of understanding the stages of personal growth through which most people pass on their way to defensive readiness.

There are five distinct, and distinctly necessary, phases of growth in this sphere. The stages are:

What's the best way to take control of your own life and push yourself against boundaries?

According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, it's all about your mindset. Successful people tend to focus on growth, solving problems and self-improvement, while unsuccessful people think of their abilities as fixed assets and avoid challenges.

Dweck says that there are two basic categories that peoples' behavioral traits tend to fall into: fixed and growth mindsets. This infographic by Nigel Holmes summarizes these differences.

I use Globish daily to have a dialogue with Nippon, Turkish or from the Magrhreb. But in a forum of the French-speaking sphere, the use of foreign languages could be made tastier by a summary in Gaul, or in Wallon.